


Not Too Late

by maniacalmole



Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Gen, M/M, Onslow for like a second
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-10
Updated: 2017-11-17
Packaged: 2019-01-31 15:31:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 19,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12684711
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maniacalmole/pseuds/maniacalmole
Summary: What if Aziraphale and Crowley didn't meet until right before the End of the World? The Guardian of the Eastern Gate and the Serpent have kept their distance for thousands of years, only to finally discover, right before the battle, that neither of them is what the other expected.





	1. In the Beginning: AKA a Very Long Prologue

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Не слишком поздно](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16872237) by [curious_Lissa](https://archiveofourown.org/users/curious_Lissa/pseuds/curious_Lissa)



                The history of humanity was shaped by rebellion.

                Well, several rebellions. Lots of them. Okay, lots and lots of rebellions, spread out over thousands of years, led by thousands of people across the whole wide world.

                But if you go back to the very Beginning, it was one rebellion in particular that really set things in motion.

                No. Not that one.

                A little while after _That One_ , another, seemingly tinier rebellion took place. One angel was about to break an order and change history. After the Serpent had slithered into the Garden, rules had already been made more brittle. Rebellion became possible in Heaven with the first fall of the angels, and now it had spread to Earth, the little green marble floating through space that was about to experience a whole lot of things it had never experienced before. The first promise had been broken. History, a list of bent rules and ignored orders that would extend through all time, was being unfurled. Through the midst of it all humanity would have just a bit of help, a nudge here and there, and, at the end of it all, there were two beings who would be frantically trying to ensure that it would not, in fact, be the end of much of anything, not if they could very well help it. The first seed of the corruption of humanity had been sown. One misbehaving angel was about to plant the seed of its salvation.

                No. Not _that_ angel.

 

                The Guardian of the Western Gate of Paradise on Earth had been having rather a rough time of it. It was that bloody Serpent’s fault, he thought. If it hadn’t been for him, he could be eating figs or something. Instead his ears were still ringing from the hours of chastisement he’d just received in Heaven. No one technically knew which gate the Serpent had gotten through. That hadn’t stopped his higher-ups from giving him an earful, and although ears had only just been invented, the high-ranking angels were already proving very good at it. Still, it had to be better than being chastised by God himself*.

*This was a belief that higher-ups actively encouraged in religions across time and space. After all, higher-ups had to be _for_ something, didn’t they?

                Now it was his turn to spread the message to the other angels stationed on Earth. He’d already done most of them. It was a simple set of rules, really. ‘Do not approach the humans unless given orders from Heaven.’ ‘Do not approach the Serpent.’ ‘Do not allow the humans back into the Garden of Eden.’ ‘Do not appear in a visual or physical manifestation on Earth unless you are explicitly told to do so.’ ‘ _I mean it, keep away from that bloody Serpent!_ ’ All rather intuitive instructions.

                The angels were taking it well enough. Most of them found humans a bit funny anyway, and didn’t mind not having to talk to them. He’d done as he had been told and spread the message to every angel on Earth except one. That left only….

                Ugh. Aziraphale. _Not that guy_. So far he’d managed to avoid running into him here in the Garden. There was just something about the way he stared at you while you were talking, as though he already knew exactly what you were going to say and was planning his pedantic rebuttal five steps ahead. If he tried to spread Heaven’s words of warning to him, he’d probably end up being chastised all over again. _‘Now, you did make_ sure _you never left your gate unattended, didn’t you? I’m sure_ I _never did. They did tell us that the demons might be coming, and I’m sure if we had_ all _listened, we wouldn’t be in this situation right now. Oh, I’m not blaming you,_ per se _, I’m only pointing out that_ someone _must have made a mistake, that’s all. It’s only_ logical _.’_ Of course, the Guardian of the Western Gate had never left his post, not even for a second. One couldn’t be too sure, though. The snake had to have gotten in somehow. That bloody Eastern Gate pain in the arse was the least likely person to have broken one of Heaven’s rules. Besides, where would he have had to go? And the Western Guardian did not relish the idea of talking to him after someone had made such a blunder. Talking to Aziraphale after someone had made a mistake was like being slapped repeatedly by the physical manifestation of the phrase ‘I told you so’.

 _It’s hardly fair that I should be the one who has to pass on Heaven’s message to him_ , the angel thought. And then, because thinking ‘it’s hardly fair’ was a bit too close to a rebellion, he changed his thoughts to, _It’s hardly necessary. I mean, what’s he gonna do? Go and chat with the humans about Heaven’s weaknesses? Tell them all about how some of the angels revolted and how disobeying Heaven’s orders is even a possibility? He’s not that stupid._ He was so tired. The Earth wasn’t such a bad place, but it was harder to walk through than Heaven. The ground was too uneven. He had been walking all day. His feet felt heavy. His ears hurt. If he turned back now, he could make it back in time to watch the sunset from his own gate, all alone, in peace and quiet.

                The Guardian of the Western Gate frowned towards the East. He just wanted to go home. The figs were calling to him.

                He sniffed, then turned on his heel, and, whistling, marched back in the other direction. _After all, what could go wrong? The rules are so obvious. It’s not like he’s going to go and have a chat with the bloody Serpent._

 

                At least, that was what should have happened. The Guardian of the Western Gate would commit his one and only offense against Heaven, which would go unknown forever. Heaven never checked up on the field agents to see if they were following the rules. They had assumed that if one of them _had_ come into contact with the Serpent, they would know about it. The poor angel would probably end up seduced to the path of evil and would attempt to lead a rebellion against Heaven from Earth this time.

                Six millennia later, they had forgotten all about it.

                Thus was the beginning of the story we all know and love.

 

                But, a small rip in time and space appears, and reality is distorted, just one tiny bit. Just enough to make a butterfly go ‘oh, shit, a rip in time and space!’ and fly away before he is stepped on and crushed, to live a long and happy life instead.

                The angel headed for the figs.

                Then, he sighed, and turned back. It was no use. He was no rule-breaker. He would just have to keep walking until he reached Aziraphale’s gate and tell him the news. These rules were too important to go untold.

                So in this universe….

                By the time the Serpent slithered by later that day Aziraphale was long gone.

 

                And so, for ages, the angel and the demon knew only the versions of each other that lived in their imaginations. Aziraphale knew of the Serpent’s many deeds. The snake must have known of Aziraphale—he was the only angel who had stayed on Earth for long after the expulsion from the Garden. He’d been stationed to guard against the Serpent, who Heaven knew was still loose and posed the greatest threat to humanity’s virtue. Aziraphale was the one they left to fight him.

                This was all either of them knew: they were one angel and one demon, left alone, away from their peers. Left to strive against each other until the end of time.

                They avoided each other as much as possible. They did have their jobs to do, but they preferred to conduct their battles at a distance. They never had any contact.

                Until one day. After a few thousand years of foiling each other’s divine or satanic plans from afar, Aziraphale found a sigil carved into an important rock.*

*Rocks were very important, in the early days.

The sigil was plainly evil. It would spread malevolent energies up to three villages away. Aziraphale had seen the likes of it before, carved by the Serpent, of course. He had destroyed them all. But the snake had outdone himself this time. It was huge, intricate, and precise.

                In one corner of the stone, there were some smaller carvings that appeared out of place. Aziraphale approached them, squinting.

                They said, “Blast it it took me ages to carve this here leave my bloody sigil up this time you blasted angel”.

                In an infernal dialect, of course. But infernal was quite close to ethereal, and Aziraphale could understand it, even if it had likely been written without the expectation that it would ever be read.

                He almost laughed.

                But no. This was war. This was Serious. He destroyed the sigil, leaving only shards of stone upon the ground.

                On one of them, he wrote, “’Leave my bloody sigil up this time you blasted angel’ is not a proper angel-warding spell.’”

                He left, smiling to himself, and wondering if the demon would ever see it.

 

                Hundreds of years passed.

                Aziraphale found a shrine to a pagan god that was a direct rebellion against the church he had just spent the last decade building. In the same city. On the shrine was a new sigil—one that made it impossible for an angel to touch. And in a language that used to be common but had died a century ago were the words, “Take that you feathered fool.”

 

                They went on like this for a while, leaving each other vexed messages, never knowing what each other actually looked like. It was similar to a modern relationship that had started online, except this was of course a relationship of enemies.

                 In Egypt, Aziraphale warned the people that if they were ever approached by a man who called himself ‘the Serpent’, they should not listen to his advice, but run away.

                An urchin boy passed on a message to him. “‘Call me Crowley’, he says.”

                Aziraphale sent back the message, “No.”

 

                Then there was the statue of the Roman martyr.

                “If you make martyrs of us we will only come back stronger" said the engraving. Then, in a very simple form of early writing that couldn’t even be recognized as writing anymore, at least by any mortal, at the bottom it said “That goes for you too, you Serpent.”

                All good and well, until it was finally seen a few decades later. The Roman Empire had adopted Christianity. The statue still stood. Aziraphale heard news that someone had put graffiti on it.

                “If you use your power to oppress others you are no longer martyrs.”

                That one got under his skin. It was clearly meant to stir up rebellion, which would lead to violence and suffering—the demon’s number one goal. He had put it somewhere he knew Aziraphale would see it, taunting him. And surely he must have known that it wasn’t Aziraphale’s doing that the humans here had gotten carried away with their religious fervor. They were mostly concerned with keeping their power, anyway; encouraging a revolt would only make matters worse. It was politicizing religion. Things like that only caused strife. That was probably exactly what the demon wanted. It was only too easy to make humans think the way to serve their faith was by politicizing it; Aziraphale tried to stay out of it. It happened anyway. That Serpent was clearly involving himself, and he was trying to trap Aziraphale into doing the same.

                He cleaned the statue, and wrote something else on it, neatly, near the old engraving.

                “Those _true_ of faith will not oppress others, but be their salvation.”

                A few more years passed. The politics grew worse. Civil war broke out, the two factions each citing their faith as their divine reason for fighting. The city was destroyed. The statue was demolished, but when most of the fighting had ended, Aziraphale returned to his home to sense that a demonic presence had been there, and to find the old engraving, broken apart from the statue, by his door.

                “Those true of faith will not oppress others, but be their salvation.” The factions had claimed it was their religious duty to fight each other, to rid the other side of their treacherous beliefs so that the one true faith could cleanse them of their sins. Aziraphale threw the stone against the floor. As though he had meant the words like that! But that was what the Serpent did. He twisted things. He made good intentions appear bad, and bad appear good.

 

                They had no contact for a while after that.

 

                A few centuries later, Aziraphale was in Asia, trying to encourage the growing trend of movements that supported peace. They also tended to support self-denial. It was strange, then, when one of the monasteries reported high levels of obesity. “They just couldn’t figure out where all the food was coming from”, the head monks had explained sheepishly. “It was anonymously donated, tons of already prepared food kept showing up on their doorstep, encouraging all manner of gluttony and indulgence.”

                Aziraphale smiled. He had never much seen the advantage of asceticism. If this was the worst the demon could do, he was going to have to step up his game.

                He told the monks that they didn’t have to worry, and if they were really concerned about the food causing the members to neglect their duties, they could donate it to nearby villagers, who could certainly do with the extra.

 

                A few more centuries, and the angel was back in Europe. Religious factions were fighting again. There was also culture, music, stories, some even being written down or printed, trade, science, discovery—all things that were wonderfully distracting. Aziraphale had to admit he was less involved with the big picture things, like building churches and monasteries—those all seemed to turn upside down in the end, anyway, erupting into conflict almost every time. He suspected the Serpents’ doing. As for himself, he was taking a different approach. He found that the best way to benefit humanity seemed to be through the little things—a bless here, a miracle there. Promoting kindness and compassion as best he could. Plus, it would be a lot harder for the demon to thwart such a plan. It wasn’t as though he was going to go around causing minor irritations and promoting pettiness in retaliation.

                Then, mercantilism was invented, then the Industrial Revolution occurred, followed by rapid urbanization, pollution, lowered living standards, colonialism, and the sense in general that people had to live their lives working uncomfortably all day, and the notion that any form of diversion was most likely sinful, which, ironically, led to people caring a lot less whether what they were doing was morally corrupt or not. Aziraphale had to hand it to the snake on that one.

                He tried a few different campaigns, including the publication of a vast series of pamphlets encouraging people not to be taken in by the wiles of greed and envy, which, like ghastly serpents, would creep into the most virtuous of hearts and spread their poisons therewithin.

                This was met by an anonymous letter ‘to the author’ in which Aziraphale was informed, in oddly familiar handwriting, that “the bit about serpents was a low blow.”

                Aziraphale, in the next pamphlet series, mentioned in a postscript that “One would have to aim low to hit one who crawls upon the ground.”

                The next year a new anonymous publication was put out satirizing Aziraphale’s and others like it.

 

                One year, an article was published in a popular newspaper about the “depravity and dangers of modern theater”. Aziraphale received a copy of the article, cut out, in the mail. An attached note said, “If you’re behind this, you’re missing out.”

                Aziraphale almost laughed. He almost laughed _fondly_ , in fact, but of course that warm feeling was not fondness at all, but rage for the battle that had been brewing between them for thousands of years.

 

                Well. It was almost time.


	2. In Heaven's Name

  1. It was not quite as good a year as any. It was a ruddy awful year, in fact, for this to be happening. Why not wait another ten years? Make it a nice round millennium.



                But no. Aziraphale got the call in 1990.

                He went to Heaven, and returned with a set of battle armor, and a sword.

                It wasn’t the impressive flaming sword he would have liked, of course. He’d given that to the humans. Heaven had given him a replacement, though. You’ll need it, they’d said.

                You will begin the battle on Earth.

                Aziraphale wouldn’t have seen himself as a soldier, but you had to go with what Heaven saw. They’d been given some conflicting images. The Aziraphale they’d known millennia ago hadn’t been the strongest or most fierce, but he’d been away for a long time. Heaven wouldn’t have chosen just anyone to serve in its army for the battle for final glory. But the Serpent was on Earth. He would need Taking Care Of. According to Aziraphale’s reports, he had barely managed to keep him at bay this long. The battle would of course start on Earth, and Hell’s second most notorious demon was already conveniently there. Aziraphale had been doing a good enough job so far, and no other angel much liked the idea of stepping in.

                Heaven was only making choices based on what it knew, and its comprehension of Earth came almost entirely from Aziraphale’s reports. Much the same thing was occurring in Hell based on what Crowley was reporting whenever they checked up on him. Heaven and Hell could only judge based on what their field experts told them.

                The thing about Aziraphale’s and Crowley’s reports was this: they were both positively terrified of each other.

                Aziraphale had been bragging to his superiors about having lasted for six-thousand years without being corrupted by the slimiest, most cruel, most terrifying demon in existence. The Crowley he thought he was fighting against would have scared the celestial socks off of all the other angels. They were extremely impressed that he had managed not to be killed so far by his dastardly plots. He must be a warrior, they thought. Aziraphale would almost have agreed. He had always imagined that the Serpent must be frighteningly clever, otherwise why would he be the one Hell had chosen to stay on Earth?*

*Perhaps if he had considered the fact that Heaven had chosen _him_ as its representative among humans, in spite of his less-than-perfect warrior skills, Aziraphale would have been less afraid. But fear ignores logic like the plague.

                Small instances of near-contact aside, they had never really met each other. They saw only the effects of each other’s’ work. Aziraphale saw evil and hatred and selfishness and cruelty spread across the Earth, and he knew who had been sent to do exactly that. Crowley had seen what divine retribution could look like, or at least, what some religious humans called ‘justice’. Neither could be blamed for being scared.

                The world was full of darkness. And now it was about to be destroyed.

                Aziraphale had never hated the Serpent more. True, Heaven had agreed to the War, but they wouldn’t have had to if people like that snake had just surrendered and been obedient. They didn’t have to take it out on the Earth. Aziraphale had tried to stop him, but the Serpent had done his damage. The real problem was the rest of Hell, though, and all the demons with it. They were the ones causing the war. For once in his life, Aziraphale almost wished he’d spent more time in Heaven combatting the powers of the fallen angels instead of whittling his time away among humans trying to save the Earth.

                Maybe then he wouldn’t miss it so much.

                If the war must be, then so be it. If he was meant to fight the Serpent of Eden, the corruption of mankind, the result of whose work was every dark and evil thing, then he would do so, and he would make him pay.

                Not that he was very good at that sort of thing, really.

                Aziraphale knew that Crowley was the enemy. But somehow, because he was the only angel on Earth, and the only one to come in contact with him—if only indirectly—or to try to foil his plans…then it seemed, in a way, that he was _his_ enemy. Specifically his. And that little possessive word made him feel just a tad more special, like he must have _done_ something to have warranted such a grand nemesis. It was this silly little thought alone that gave him the confidence to talk back to him, like he was also someone worth fearing—though in truth he knew every time he looked in the mirror that he was an out-of-shape human-sized Principality who was far better suited for deskwork than fighting.

                Whereas the Serpent, he was sure, would not have spent so much of the past millennia intermingling with humans. He at least would not have done so as a regular human himself, but he had rather in fact most likely been floating around as a whisper in the night, a suggestion of bad intentions, the very essence of decadent temptation. Or if he had needed to take a human form for his insinuations, he had probably done so only when a particularly powerful human needed a more direct form of enticement. He probably would have laughed to see his so-called arch-nemesis hanging around with humans just for fun because he was still weak enough to crave social interaction, or succumbing himself to basic human needs like eating and drinking and running a small used bookstore to make a petty allowance that he could splurge on human attractions such as music and the theater; all things the Serpent would undoubtedly not understand.

                Still…the snake had to have _some_ knowledge of human pursuits. He was a mastermind of manipulation; he probably had some familiarity with desires like gluttony and sloth and, well, lust, and he probably understood these things just enough to know how to use them to lure humans into traps of sin and debauchery. But listening to music for the pleasure of it? Eating food because it tasted good? If the Serpent knew Aziraphale did any of these things, he would probably realize at once that he was dealing with no more than an idle fool.

                If the snake ever took a human form, Aziraphale imagined it would be one for striking fear into the hearts of humans so he could intimidate them into respecting him. He imagined he must be tall, with pointed features and a deep, booming voice and horns and glowing eyes, fangs, and a long cloak, although he wasn’t sure why that should matter. But he would most certainly have a pointy beard, and long claws, and the ability to make shadows grow longer and do all sorts of heinous things upon the Earth, and this was the villain he had been charged to fight. This was the creature whom Heaven had just called to tell him he must vanquish.

 

                Crowley was brushing his teeth when he got the call from his superiors. He almost choked on his mint-flavored toothpaste.


	3. What The Devil Has Been Up To

                Crowley had been sending Hell reports about how long he had lasted in battle against one of Heaven’s greatest warriors. The angel was obviously smart. He had been foiling his plans for millennia, and the demon had just enough self-confidence to know that some of those plans had been pretty good. The angel—whom Crowley had subconsciously been imagining as a shining buff guy with heavy-duty armor and blindingly bright wings and a booming voice of his own—was a threat. He always had been. He was the reason Crowley had switched from burning down charities to gluing coins to the pavement on wealthy streets.*

*It certainly wasn’t because he’d seen one too many society crumble from poverty. Demons weren’t concerned by things like that, obviously.

                Crowley would have lived his life in constant fear of this winged catastrophe of heavenly wrath if he hadn’t been convinced that no angel would frequent the same places on Earth that he liked to hang around. He’d sent the message about the theater partly to see if he was right. Of course, he’d gotten no reply. The angel would never reveal whether or not he cared for Earth’s many forms of entertainment. The demon had tracked down his address. He’d been surprised by how close they’d been living to each other that whole time without knowing it. That was probably just a fluke though. The angel was probably currently in some monastery in Tibet or something, not in London in the 1990s. Still, he’d find him soon enough. Hell and Heaven had determined it.

                The battle to start the war….

                He was not a warrior.

                When it was phrased like that, he had to admit—they hadn’t really been fighting each other at all. Not really. They’d survived bravely and cunningly these past millennia, matching wits and all that. But actually fighting?

                Oh dear.

                There had to be another way. There had to be something he could do to get out of it. He didn’t like the idea of facing the others Downstairs. They weren’t the most understanding. Maybe he could find the angel’s location again and send him a message, asking him—

                Asking what?

                No servant of Heaven would back down from a fight against a demon. The best Crowley could do was try to plan. It might help to know what the angel was thinking, though. Then he could be one step ahead of him. Or something like that. It couldn’t hurt to test the waters a bit, see how the angel was preparing himself for the battle.

 

                And so it was that Aziraphale received, a few days later, the message “So. We fight at last, eh?” which, unbeknownst to him, Crowley had only sent out of the desperate hope that Aziraphale might reply, “No, let’s not.” In truth, Crowley knew Aziraphale would not back down. Aziraphale knew, too, that a demon would never accept a surrender. So instead of replying with his true thoughts, which were “Well I suppose so, although gosh, I’d really rather not,” he decided the only thing to do was to try to intimidate the demon. He’d probably been trying to psych him out in the first place anyway. So Aziraphale replied, “So it would seem, and about time, isn’t it?” To which Crowley replied, “Then I’ll see you at Armageddon, unless you’re too chicken?” and Aziraphale said “I’m ready when you are,” and on and on it went, both of them assuring the other how much they were looking forward to it. They threatened and taunted, both imagining much worse things than the other had meant to insinuate with their vaguely intimidating words. They threatened worse and worse things, until the thought of what injuries could be inflicted with an infernal weapon became too much for Aziraphale.

                And so, finally, he sent Crowley the message, “Parley.”

                And Crowley, because he had spent some time among pirates in the eighteenth century, knew what it meant, and so he agreed.


	4. Cool Entrance

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had to give this chapter that title because it’s the name of the Word document this story has been sitting in since I first started writing it.

                Aziraphale stood at the top of the hill. He cursed himself for being the type of person who could never bear to show up to things late. He didn’t want to be the first person there, awkwardly stood in plain view! What he didn’t know was that he couldn’t have avoided it, because Crowley was also the type of person whose anxiety made him always early, as well as the type of person who was dramatic enough to hide in the bushes until after the other person showed up so that he could still make a stylishly cool ‘late entrance’.

                Aziraphale had somewhat been expecting something occult, or even ethereal. He’d been imagining a suddenly darkening sky and flashes of lightning illuminating a tall and looming silhouette, or the ground cracking open, fire bubbling out of the pit as the creature clawed his way up onto the surface of the earth. He’d been expecting the demon to arrive in a supernatural way. He had not expected him to arrive as an average-heighted human walking up the hill through the sunny day to greet him with a lopsided grin. It was a bit underwhelming.

                He still looked cool, though, a tiny voice in Aziraphale’s mind had to admit, sauntering towards him with his hands in his pockets and that grin that would be better described as crooked than lopsided, because that was the edgier way of putting it, and he certainly did look like he had an edge with those dark shades and snakeskin shoes—the bastard.

                Crowley would have appreciated this. He’d had to put a lot of effort into keeping his hands in his pockets instead of giving a little wave.

                “Hi,” he said anyway. He quickly corrected it to, “We meet at last.” Crowley hoped he had said it in a sardonic, antagonistic way, rather than a friendly one. He’d tried to make his voice sound wry. The angel was certainly glowering at him like they were in a proper meeting of adversaries.

                “Yes. Here we are.” _So this is it_ , Aziraphale thought. _The Serpent of Eden_. He shivered. He had been nervous all morning, trying to drink cocoa to calm himself down, but shaking too much to hold the mug. It had been as though six-thousand-years’ worth of fear had built itself up to lead to this one moment, when his fear would be realized, and he would meet his foe face-to-face.

                They stood, face-to-face, the most frightening thing by far being the awkward silence they were standing in. A few ducks waddled past.

                “Erm,” Crowley coughed. “You called for parley?”

                “Yes.” Aziraphale drew himself up. “A preparatory measure. To discuss the details of the, er, battle. At Arma—” He cut himself off and waited uncomfortably for a family with small children to pass by. “Did you have to set the meeting here?” he said tartly.

                “I thought it would be in my best interest to set the place somewhere with humans around,” Crowley replied. “Since that might keep you in check. I didn’t want any early surprise attacks.”

                “I would not go against the Heavenly plan,” Aziraphale said disapprovingly. “The battle has to take place at Armageddon, on the day of the Apocalypse. I’m not going to attack you _now_.”

                Crowley shrugged. “Pays to be careful. You didn’t bring your flaming sword, then?”

                _The demon thought he still had it!_ Aziraphale thought fast. It wouldn’t do any good for him to admit that he was less well armed than suspected. “I, er. I have it within reach.”

                Crowley looked for a moment as though he were confusedly looking for extra pockets in Aziraphale’s clothes that he might have missed. Aziraphale gave him a quizzical look.

                “I mean, it is not within this realm.”

                “Oh, right. Within reach within the other realm. Of course.” Crowley laughed, then tried to look smug, simply for the sake of not looking embarrassed.

                Aziraphale frowned. “I assume you brought your greatest weapon? Or is that your poisonous tongue?”

                “Well, it’s in my mouth, so, you know. Kind of hard to leave at home.”

                Aziraphale blinked at him. He felt like he was stepping from a dream into a stone-cold sober reality. The Serpent in front of him was twisting his impression of the world into knots. Aziraphale couldn’t help staring.

                He was just some guy.

                Aziraphale’s previous perspective on reality rebelled against this, and he fought the evidence of his own eyes by putting his past beliefs into words. “So. You’re the incarnation of evil.”

                “So you’re Heaven’s divine representative on Earth,” Crowley replied.

                That could certainly have been the voice of evil. It was far too smooth and smug. Aziraphale was aware that his own voice did not exactly sound like a mighty lion’s roar. “I am. And I thought it might be a good idea for us to meet in person, before the war begins, since we are to lead off the battle on the Earthen front. So we know who to look for. And don’t, uhm. Attack the—wrong—person….”

                “The ‘Earthen front’?” Crowley asked.

                “Yes. You know. We fight at Armageddon, then once we’ve started off the battle, the rest of Heaven and Hell join us and we fight upon Earth for the glory of—”

                “What?” Crowley cried, his voice cracking. “We’re going to start the whole war? I mean, I knew we were, but I thought Heaven and Hell were going to wait for us to be finished. I didn’t know they were going to swoop down while we were still fighting!” His voice sounded strangled. “This is just great. You mean even if I defeat you, I have to fight the entire army of Heaven? Why can’t they just bugger off?”

_So much for the seductive voice of sin_ , Aziraphale thought smugly, his brain hopping over the word ‘seductive’ as though it were an adjective he used all the time*

*In an exclusively metaphorical way, of course.

and not looking back. “As convincing as it is when you put it like that, I don’t think Heaven would be interested in giving up its chance for the battle it has been waiting for for all time.”

                “Right, right,” Crowley said irritably.

                “If the prospect of facing Heaven’s armed forces doesn’t appeal to you, you could comfort yourself with the idea that I might win.”

                “And then you would get to face all the forces of Hell,” Crowley pointed out with a smirk. “Think you could handle that?”

                “I own a small bookshop in Soho and am approached regularly by businesspersons who seem to think that I would be interested in relocating,” the angel said. “And who are never very willing to understand that I don’t agree with them. In other words, I am not going to be intimidated as easily as that.”

                Crowley snorted. He snickered—not with the malicious laugh Aziraphale had imagined of him. The angel stood uncertainly, waiting for him to finish.

                Crowley had finished, but he was simply lost for words. The angel didn’t seem to know what to say either. Crowley was finding himself distracted.  Aziraphale did not look at all how he had expected. He was more delighted than he would admit to himself.

                “As I was saying,” the angel went on, “it would be good to set our plans in concrete, so we don’t have any unforeseen disturbances on our, erm, big day.”

                “Right, right.” Was that nail polish? He’d imagined the angel as having a divine sort of radiance about him, sure, but that definitely looked like an _earthly_ manicure.

                “It would cause less harm to the humans that day. I hope. At least until—” Aziraphale cleared his throat. “Well, anyway. It might be best for us to set our location now.”

                “Location?”

                “Armageddon?” Aziraphale raised his eyebrows.

                “You mean they haven’t told you where it is?”

                The angel winced at him. Crowley realized he truly didn’t know. He must have superiors who were less than communicative. _You and me both_ , he thought.

                “I know, of course, that events must center around one focal point—”

                “The Antichrist,” Crowley supplied.

                “Yes, of course. Erm.”

                It was Crowley’s turn to raise his eyebrows. When the angel didn’t respond, he grinned. “I think I can arrange something with him. I’ll just phone you the address when it happens, shall I?”

                “Do,” Aziraphale said, frowning. He sighed. “I hope it isn’t somewhere in the city. Traffic has been dreadful lately.”

                “You’re telling me,” Crowley mumbled. His brow creased. He had been expecting holy fire. He’d been expecting a stern and unyielding soldier of Heaven who would admonish him for his sins and talk down to him as a vile creature of the inferno. He hadn’t been expecting _relatable_.

                “I suppose I’d better actually give you my number, then,” Aziraphale said uncertainly. “Since the sooner I can get to Armageddon, the sooner we can get the whole thing ov—um, started.”

                “Right,” Crowley said, digging in his pockets for a pen.

                “And, erm. That is of course what we’ve been waiting for.”

                Crowley glanced up at him. The angel handed him a folded piece of paper.

                “For all these eons.”

                “Cheers,” Crowley said, taking the paper, and trying to look at him surreptitiously through his shades while taking down the number.

                The best part was, he seemed to be wearing reading glasses. There was no reason an angel should need them. He must have picked it up from humans, and he must have had some reason for choosing to wear them other than trying to look intimidating. The tartan sweater vest proved that wasn’t his main goal, too. In fact the whole outfit was the kind of neat, planned but still definitively-not-stylish ensemble that could only have been put together by someone who had spent time among humans. So he hadn’t been living out all those millennia looking down on the world from a pedestal in the sky after all. The angel had been making an effort at _mingling_.

                “Right, well.” The angel said miserably, “That all’s said and done.”

                “Glad we got that sorted,” Crowley agreed. “Erm. Thanks for—uh.”

                “Yes,” Aziraphale said. “And you—mm.”

                “It’s been an absolute misery meeting you,” Crowley said helpfully. “You disgusting sycophant.”

                “Likewise, you wretched creature,” Aziraphale said tiredly. And with something else in his expression—regret?

                “Then I’ll see you at the end of the world, I guess,” the demon said.

                “I’ll see you there,” Aziraphale replied. “I hope you prepare yourself.” And, for some reason, in spite of himself, he felt he meant it.


	5. A Deal With The Devil

                Aziraphale tried to set his affairs in order. It was an odd thing to do, since, well, it didn’t really matter, did it? He’d spent half a day fretting over his will and to whom he should leave his belongings, because the last human he’d been close to had died twenty years ago, before remembering that there would be no one—no one left.

                So there would be no leaving anything to anyone, but still he felt as though he had to do some sort of organizing, as though that made things less horrible. ‘Better tidy up. The Apocalypse is coming.’ He’d almost cleaned his shop, but then he’d thought better of it. He wanted to sit in it, just the way it was. He wanted it to look like itself right up until the very end.

                He wished things were happening differently, so that it could all be preserved, with time stopped and everything frozen, because that would be an easier sort of end to bear. Or he wished that once the destruction had happened he would be left with the pieces, the shattered and empty Earth, so at least it would seem like there was still a place to start over—or if that was impossible, at least pieces to show that there had once been something at all. But this wasn’t even going to be like the post-Apocalyptic wastelands in the shows on television. Everything was going to be obliterated.

                Gone.

 

                A few days later, with the Apocalypse looming closer, Aziraphale got a call. It was the demon. He was calling for another Parley.

                Aziraphale left his home in a daze, trying not to think about the fact that he could probably count the number of times he would walk through that door again on one hand.

 

                Crowley had set the Parley at a restaurant because there were only so many mealtimes left and he wanted to visit all his favorites one last time. He didn’t have time to travel the world, but he could at least make it through London’s cuisine as long as he didn’t waste any chances.

                Aziraphale arrived and greeted the waitress by name, nearly giving Crowley a heart attack. _We’ve never been here at the same time_ , he thought. _I would have sensed it_. It was clear the angel had been there before, nonetheless, and he liked the place. Crowley could tell that Aziraphale came very close to complimenting him on his choice before remembering that he despised him and cutting himself off by pretending to have gotten soy sauce on his jacket.

                And that was how Crowley came to be sitting in a restaurant, watching the angel eat sushi. He looked so mundane, so _human_. Crowley sat across from him, grinning at him like he had never seen a person before.

                This was the Guardian of the Eastern Gate. _This_ was the angel who had been his arch-nemesis for all these years. The dreaded warrior of Heaven. The blazing sword to strike down demons and the no-nonsense attitude to smite any attempt at lightening the mood through inappropriate banter.

                At least that was how he had thought of him up until now. Now he was starting to see the angel’s deadpan responses from a different angle.

                Aziraphale was sitting with his elbow on the table and his head on his fist, side-eying a noisy group of teenagers in the table next to theirs.

                “I mean, really. I heard less chatter in Babel.”

                “Ah, Babel. Why’d you have to go and tear down their tower again? Because they were aiming too high? Seems like a bit of a tantrum on Heaven’s part, don’t you think?”

                “You were just upset because you had to learn a bunch of new languages,” Aziraphale replied. He didn’t say it in a rage with a threatening tone warning the demon not to go too far. He said it before sipping his tea. His eyebrows were slightly raised, his lips were pressed together, but the corners of his mouth turned up in what was almost a smile. A _smile_.

                “Well, so did you,” Crowley said. He tried to sound smug instead of bubbly. _Get a hold of yourself. He could still smite you_.

                “Actually I find linguistics fascinating,” Aziraphale said. He sounded plenty smug enough.

                Crowley rolled his eyes, his mood being rapidly brought back down to Earth.

                “You called for Parley.”

                “Right. Listen.” Crowley leaned with his elbow on the table, trying to look casual. “I’ve got influence with the Antichrist, right? I could probably talk to him, see about where he’s thinking this whole Apocalypse thing should go down.”

                Aziraphale squinted at him doubtfully. “Right.”

                “So I figure, why not make a deal?”

                The demon grinned, and Aziraphale felt increasingly nervous. “What sort of deal?”

                “A bargain. One that benefits both you and me. I do you a favor, and in return, you promise not to use your flaming sword in the final battle. Just regular, non-enflamed weapons only.”

                “And what is this ‘favor’?”

                “I get the Antichrist to stage Armageddon somewhere far, far away—in some remote corner of the Earth, somewhere without any humans. The beings you’re sworn to protect from the likes of me?”

                Aziraphale tried not to look at him like he was too much of a treasure. He was still evil, after all. He still probably wanted to destroy as many humans as possible. But the angel could hardly keep back his grin. This could solve everything. All he was asking for was that he not use the sword….

                Angels are supposed to be honest. But Aziraphale would trade a white lie or two for the safety of his world.

                “Maybe….”

                _He’s buying it_ , Crowley thought. _And he’ll give up the sword, too_. Maybe—just maybe—if they stuck the battle in the middle of a desert somewhere, they could keep it contained. And nobody would have to get hurt.

                “An interesting proposition,” Aziraphale said. “I think—I think I could agree to that.”

                “Yeah?” Crowley said. “I mean, right. Your lot are bound to protect the humans, and all.”

                Aziraphale wished that were true. He felt the lie punch him in the gut. But the demon seemed to believe it. And all he had to do was give up something he didn’t even have. “It’s a deal,” he said, trying not to smile too big. He held his hand across the table, and the demon took it, grinning that unreadable grin.

                It was in fact very readable for those not in the ninth circle of Denial. It was the grin of someone who was drunkenly happy.

                “Great,” Crowley said. “I mean, enjoy having to fight without fire. You might actually have to use something called ‘skill’.”

                “I’ll still have a regular sword,” Aziraphale said. “The fire doesn’t make that much of a difference, I’d imagine, at least not to someone with your background.”

                “So you think you’re up for the challenge? You haven’t gone rusty?”

                “I might be,” the angel said airily. “I suppose you’ll have to ask yourself one question. ‘Do I feel lucky?’”

                Time seemed to stop. Something ticklish bubbled up inside Crowley from his stomach to his throat, threatening to burst out of him. It was highly inappropriate laughter. He stifled himself, stuffing a hand over his mouth.

                “I admit,” Aziraphale said quietly, looking down at his nails, “that I stole that from a film.”

                “You’ve seen—” Crowley wheezed.

                “The theater had sold out for the evening,” Aziraphale said wretchedly. “It wasn’t as though it was the type of thing I normally go for.”

                “But you enjoyed it. You remembered the line.”

                “Some people have something called ‘memory’,” Aziraphale said. His lips pressed together but were slightly curved, into an expression that was….

                Snarky. That was how he’d been this whole time. _Snarky_.

                “So you do go to the theater.”

                “Thank you, madam. Well. Here’s the bill.”

                “What sort of plays does an angel like, I wonder?”

                “Oh, I’ll just take it. It’s not like it matters, anymore, does it?”

                Crowley watched as Aziraphale laid out the money. He felt himself slipping into something that wasn’t really like a panic attack, but which still left him confused and not quite able to function. The angel had seen _Dirty Harry_.

                He had stubbed his toe earlier. He’d said ‘Ouch’.

_That means he can be hurt_ , said a voice inside Crowley’s head that he would rather have ignored, one that had grown out of necessity from being a demon and being very afraid for a very long time. _He’s not invincible. You could still kill him._

_It’s either that or he kills you._

                Crowley liked people. He liked getting to know them. Their likes and hobbies, pet peeves and weird habits: these were the things that made humans unique, that made them so inventive, and so thrillingly fascinating.

                Crowley hadn’t expected Aziraphale to have any of these things. He’d never planned on learning that he preferred cocoa to tea, or that he didn’t mind crying babies but hated large groups that laughed too loud, but he smiled at them anyway if they were nice to the waitress. He folded his napkin neatly on his lap but leaned his elbow on the table. Since cocoa didn’t go with sushi, he’d take water. He wished he’d gotten cocoa anyway. He laughed with his eyes instead of with his voice.

                It was difficult for Crowley, it went against his nature, to get to know all about a person and not grow to like them.

                “Well, that’s it.” The angel made as though he were dusting his hands off. “I hope I don’t come to regret this bargain with you, demon.”

                “Likewise, angel.” Crowley frowned. ‘Angel’ didn’t have quite the same biting ring to it.

                “Do call me when you’ve got the place sorted,” Aziraphale said. “Away from humans, remember.” _It might not matter_ , he thought. _It might be too big. The battle of Heaven and Hell. It might destroy the whole Earth anyway. Then again, it might just work_. The ninth circle of Denial was a hard place to quit.

                “I’ll be there,” Crowley said. “Regular sword. Don’t forget.” He was falling back down into reality. Reality always held too many sharp things.

                “Wouldn’t dream of it,” Aziraphale sighed.

                And with that, the two of them left, and the eavesdropping waitress was left to clean up after the strangest pair to whom she had ever served crunch rolls.


	6. Bookshop Drunk

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are some moments too iconic for even an alternate universe to pass by.

                Aziraphale was having a drink. He’d opened his cabinet and taken out the bottle he had been saving for—well, it didn’t matter. He didn’t know what he had been saving it for, anyway. Didn’t matter now.

                The end was looming ever nearer, and he could already feel the world disappearing. Everything was going fuzzy around the edges. When he tried to look into the future, he felt like he was looking at a bright light, far too blinding—the blaze of battle—one that left him unable to see anything else. He couldn’t focus on the past, and there was no future. Anxiety crept around the edges of the present, leaving it feeling smaller and smaller by the moment. Aziraphale sat in his shrinking life in the back room of his bookshop and stared at the bottle.

                He popped it open and poured himself a glass.

                The locked door to the shop burst open, the bell tinkling like an extremely unhelpful guard dog. Aziraphale was frozen in his chair. Someone stomped to the back room and slammed open the door. The Serpent burst through. He spotted Aziraphale and stormed over towards him. The angel clung to the table in alarm.

                Aziraphale was too confused to be scared, even though the demon’s expression was far from stable, and his sudden appearance was terribly foreboding. He was dressed in his normal clothes, not armor, but he still could have been conducting a surprise attack. He stood over Aziraphale, the table between them, and the angel shrank under his glare.

                The demon looked at the bottle. The next moment, he slammed a glass, miracled into existence, onto the table and poured himself a drink.

                “You can’t just come in here—” Aziraphale sputtered.

                “Parley, or whatever.”

                “What are you doing?”

                “Parley, parley!” the demon griped, and then he downed the entire glass all at once. He sat down. “The deal’s off,” he said.

                Aziraphale stared at the empty glass. “That was a very fine vintage,” he said quietly.

                “You couldn’t possibly have finished that bottle all by yourself.”

                “I assure you I _could_ ,” the angel said with venom.

                Crowley stared at him. “Well then you wouldn’t have been appreciating it right.”

                Aziraphale’s eyes narrowed. Then they widened. “What did you say? What did you say about the deal?”

                “It’s off. Broken.”

                “Now, look here, you slimy—”

                “Unless you happen to have excellent skills at finding things like, say, a stray Antichrist?”

                Aziraphale’s mouth opened. His hand closed automatically around the wine glass. “Erm.”

                “Because apparently I don’t know where he is.” Crowley grabbed the bottle and poured himself another one. Then he told Aziraphale all about it, about the birthday party and the boy who was not the Antichrist at all but just a child with an irregular upbringing, apparently, the lack of hellish canine, and the doomed Earth that was going to occur neither goodness nor badness knew where.

                “It’s predetermined, you see.” He was sipping his third glass. Aziraphale had stopped trying to slow him down. He, in fact, had poured himself a third as well. “Armageddon has to happen wherever the Antichrist is, only I’ve lost him.”

                “You’ve lost the Antichrist.”

                Crowley looked at him coolly, swirling the glass in his hand. “Technically, it was the nuns who lost him.”

                Aziraphale didn’t feel like arguing with a demon over whether or not blaming nuns for his failures was morally acceptable. “And now what? The end of the world—”

                “Is still going to happen.” Crowley looked down into his glass. “Just not where I expected it. Wherever _he_ is now. And unless I can find him, I can’t predict it, or convince him to start it away from anyone else. So you can use your sword in the battle if you want.” He had come to the conclusion that he might as well let the angel have the sword anyway. At least that way his death might be quicker.

                Aziraphale stared at the bottle. It was slowly being refilled from an invisible source. Wine didn’t taste as good when it had been miracled, but taste was hardly the point anymore.

                “So, what now?” Crowley asked.

                “Now,” the angel said, “I think I am going to get drunk.”

 

                An hour later, it still had not occurred to Aziraphale to ask the demon to leave.

                “The thing is…” Crowley slurred. “The thing is, if we’re both being sssnarky, then s’not angry debating, or intimidation, or anythin’. If we’re both just bein’ snarky, see, then i’s jus’ _banter_.”

                Aziraphale gave him as cool a stare as he could while drunk, which turned out to be a bit of a red-faced, wobbly squint over the table. “It isn’t banter if it’s tween enemies, ‘stead of friends,” he said. “Then it’s—it’s—“

                “What? Raillery?” Crowley said wryly.

                “Mm, no—‘s—‘s repartee, maybe.”

                “Huh.”

                “Or badinage—“

                “ _The point is_ ,” Crowley said, slamming his hand on the table. “The point is, you get done building some shrine to Satan, or something. Some really evil-looking shite. Red gems the color of blood and lasciviously grinning goat-gods, all that kind of stuff that for some reason makes humans think, ‘ah, yes, this is the most convincing argument I’ve seen for sinning and blaspheming ‘gainst the Lord yet!’ You’ve got so many splinters you’re practically a hedgehog and you’ve hammered your thumb so many times it’s gone green, not to mention all the times your carving knife slipped off the stone, and what’s it all for? For some bloody angel to knock it all down again. You _know_ it’s gonna happen. So, you’re standing there, bone tired, and wha’d’you do? You carve a message to the great bloody bastard. It’s not like I did it to try to show off my work. I wasn’ trying to make you think I was proud, like I was some great bloody infernal genius who had the guts to mock an angel like he was nothing. I didn’t have guts, I was just too bloody tired to give a damn. And you probably thought I was trying to ruffle your feathers to lure you into some reckless attack so I could use your pride against you—”

                “I wouldn’t launch a careless attack because my feathers were ruffled,” Aziraphale said indignantly. Then, “Hold on. Are you telling me you built all of those things yourself? I always thought you had your, what’dyou callem, evil henchmen, or minions, or something, do it for you.”

                “Minions? Hah!” Crowley snickered and dragged the wine bottle closer to him. “That’s a good one. I’ll have to remember that.” He poured himself another glass, pouring some wine out for the tablecloth at the same time. “Nah. I built ‘em, minionless, just like you.”

                Aziraphale’s brow wrinkled, and he rubbed his nose. Humans usually did most of the building when it came to churches. He just had to sort of plant the idea.

                Crowley was drooping. His head was almost resting on the table now. “Course, Hell would’ve liked me to do more of that sort of thing. Luring, and all that. Tempting you into fighting against me sooner.” He turned his head to rest on his cheek. “Annihilate you,” he mumbled into the tablecloth. “And every despicable, pathetic, self-righteous angel they replaced you with. Like a proper infernal soldier.” Or like a monster. Hell liked monsters. And all he wanted to be was human. No one would ever let him be just human.

                “So that was the plan,” Aziraphale said, a slight tremor in his voice. He said sardonically, trying to hide the quiver, “And what went wrong?”

                Crowley lifted his head, his glasses making his expression unreadable. “Your feathered arse never took the bait.”

                They met each other’s glance. Thousands of years had gone by without either of them quite ever comprehending the other’s tone. They both tried to now.

                Aziraphale combed through the mental images he had stored of the sinister horned monster, with snake scales and smoke billowing around him, laughing maliciously as he inscribed words into stone to shame his enemy into admitting defeat. Then he tried to imagine those same words, but said by the man sitting in front of him.

 _Sarcasm_ , he thought. _With a hint of—desperation? Using irony as a defense mechanism. Sounds familiar_. That was how he would have said them.

                “Well, I promise you,” Aziraphale said, “the next time you mock me, I shall fly into a rage.”

Crowley grinned. _How could I ever have taken anything he said seriously?_ he thought.

And Aziraphale thought, _Yes. That’s how he would have said it all_. _With a grin just like that_.

                They stared at each other through the fog of the alcohol and the fear of their future. Aziraphale thought maybe he ought to get rid of at least one of those. He winced and tried to sober up.

                “What are you doing?” the demon asked, an edge of panic in his voice.

                “Getting this out of my system. Despite what I may have said earlier, I actually don’t think I want to spend my last bit of time on Earth drunk.”

                The demon also sobered himself up, quickly. Almost too quickly. It seemed like he was afraid of the idea of being inebriated while Aziraphale wasn’t. He couldn’t blame him. He wouldn’t have liked it the other way around, either.

                Crowley _had_ been afraid. He hated to admit it. He’d spent the past hour without fear—well, without the same kind of fear he’d been feeling for eons. He was still terrified of the end of the world, but for a second he’d felt like he was sharing that fear with someone, instead of being in the presence of his enemy. But of course, this _was_ his enemy. His enemy to whom he’d just revealed far too much.

                Even if Aziraphale seemed nice—well, nice people were never the ones you could trust, were they? That was what angels were. He would lie and pretend that everything was okay. He was probably too _polite_ to bring up the fact that he was still planning on murdering Crowley. That didn’t mean his plans had changed. He was the kind of person who would apologize for being late like he meant it when he was arriving at your execution, because manners matter, and he was an angel, not a barbarian. And the scariest thing about angels was that they still acted nice to you, they still acted like they were the good guys, even when they were about to smite you.

                Sure, Aziraphale was a bit of a bastard sometimes, in a different, more human way—more than he had expected. He was almost enough of one to make the moments he was actually nice seem genuine. But Crowley wasn’t sure yet.

                “Well.” Aziraphale was giving him a wary look. “Isn’t it getting late?”

                Just like that. Sworn enemies for thousands of years, yet instead of telling him to get out of his house, he had to couch it in a passive comment. You could never trust someone like that.

                “Right,” Crowley said. “I’ll see you at the end, then. Wherever it is.”

                Aziraphale started to speak—but didn’t. What had he been about to say? That they didn’t need to wait until then? That they should, what, grab dinner sometime? There were only a few days left. It just didn’t feel right spending them alone, waiting….

                But this was the Serpent.

                Something was wrong. Of course the Serpent would be disarming. Of course he would be surprisingly open and honest. It was his job to get Aziraphale’s guard down.

                He felt like such a fool.

                The demon left. Aziraphale locked the door behind him, as though that would do any good. He left the lights on and sat back down at the table with the empty bottle and the two emptied glasses.

                He felt like such a fool. And yet thinking that made him feel so much worse.


	7. Existential Crises

                Aziraphale spent the next day moping. The day after that, he got to work.

                There had to be something he could do. He’d spent so long worrying about the fight and whether or not _he_ would make it. The truth was he did not want the world to end. Not one bit.

                He could just refuse to fight the Serpent—but that probably wouldn’t work. They would only get another angel to fight him, one who was a much better warrior, and the fight would be over that much sooner, and the rest of the war could begin.

                Aziraphale shuddered.

                He could ask the snake to battle him far away from humans in spite of the Antichrist. He could offer to fight with no sword—with no armor, even. He could suggest they do it in outer space, or outside of the physical realm entirely, to keep the world out of harm’s way. He really didn’t want to die. But he also really didn’t want to live knowing he had let billions die.

                It wouldn’t save it, though, because the Antichrist would still be there, wreaking havoc on Earth. Even if they moved the infernal and ethereal war, the Horsepersons would still go to him and together they would destroy all of Creation.

                Aziraphale believed that Heaven’s plan was just because he had to believe in it, because it was his job. But Heaven was supposed to protect people. Aziraphale had to believe that, too, for a different reason. It was what he’d been doing all this time. That was his job too. Surely if he went to them to plead humanity’s case, they would be moved?

                Then there was Hell. One thing the demon had never made him doubt was that _someone_ in Hell wanted Earth gone. It was Hell who had sent the Antichrist, the Destroyer of Worlds, _here_.

                But then, someone else from Hell had also offered to try to reason with him. To get him to hold the Apocalypse somewhere else.

                Aziraphale dusted off the small mirror that was hung in his home. He looked at himself in it. He frowned.

                He tried to decide what he believed.

                He thought about Crowley, and the way he looked, and acted, and existed in the world, at least when Aziraphale was around. He thought about the way the waitress at the sushi restaurant had smiled at him, how the ducks at the park had quacked around his ankles expectantly, how he had paused for a minute to look at the willow tree before walking away when they’d parted after meeting for the first time.

                Aziraphale knew what he wanted to believe. And so he did.

 

                But if he was going to test his luck with perhaps the riskiest and most foolish venture yet—putting his trust in a demon—he was going to have to find the bloody snake first.

                Crowley wasn’t answering his phone. True, it was the day before the Apocalypse, but what plans could he possibly have made?

                Aziraphale tried tracking down the location of the number, but even a miracle couldn’t seem to find it.*

*Crowley had given Aziraphale the number to his Bentley, which of course didn’t have an address. He’d been prepared to phone him if needed, but he hadn’t been sure he wanted an angel phoning his house at every whim.

                There was another person he could try. The demon had mentioned that the name of the boy he’d thought was the Antichrist was ‘Warlock’, and that he’d had something to do with Americans. There were only so many Warlocks within the American community in London. There were only so many people christened Warlock at all.

                Aziraphale arrived at the address of the Dowlings. It was an imposing looking place that suggested that trespassers were not particularly welcome. Nevertheless, when Aziraphale rang the doorbell several times and waited several minutes he was starting to get desperate. He glanced behind him at the street, then looked back and waved his hand impatiently. There was the sound of a variety of locks undoing themselves. The door popped open.

                “How’d you do that?”

                The angel froze. He revolved. There was still no one behind him, until he transferred his gaze downward.

                A boy was standing there, staring at him with wide eyes.

                “Erm.”

                “We’ve got lotsa alarms,” said the boy. “And locks and stuff.”

                “Erm.”

                “Are you a magician?”

                Aziraphale stared into the beaming face of the eleven-year-old and said, as though the word was being pulled from him by force, “No.”

                “Wow,” said the boy, ignoring him and walking around him to look at the locks. “It takes me five minutes to unlock them all with the key, and you didn’t even have that. Unless you stole it.” He dug around in his pocket. “Nope! Unless you stole it and then put it back in my pocket without me seeing.” He grinned up at the angel. “Do another trick!”

                Aziraphale’s mind raced for a moment, but then his rational inner voice screeched at him, _Now is not the time!_ “Erm, no.”

                “I wanted to have a magician for my birthday, but we had a clown instead.”

                “Listen, young, er, lad. I’m looking for someone named Warlock Dowling. Does he live here with you? Perhaps an older brother?”

                The boy squinted at him. “I’m not s’posed to tell strangers my name.”

                “I didn’t ask for your—” Aziraphale stopped. “Oh.” What had the demon said? Something about an eleventh birthday? Surely this boy couldn’t be eleven. He was so small. The Antichrist couldn’t be….

                “But I guess it’s okay if you’re a _magician_ ,” Warlock said slowly, with the logical reasoning of someone who’d pretty much gotten his own way his whole life and assumed the world must shape itself based off his own impression of it.*

*This would have been true if he had actually been the Antichrist. Warlock Dowling just had wealthy, indulgent parents.

                “Listen,” Aziraphale said, snapping himself out of it. Now was not the time for doubting the basis of his plan, which had been to do something about the Antichrist, who was apparently a very small boy.…No. Now was not the time for misgivings. “There’s a man I’m looking for. You might know him. He, erm. He has an air of darkness about him? Erm, a very evil aura. Probably his very presence sends shivers down the spine of a human such as yourself. Uhm.”

                Warlock stared at him blankly. Aziraphale grasped for straws.

                “About this tall—nice cheekbones—well, not _nice_ cheekbones, they’re probably very wicked cheekbones, I’m sure. Er. Always wears dark glasses?”

                “Oh. You mean my Uncle Crowley?”

                “Yes,” Aziraphale said with a sigh of relief. “Hold on. Uncle?”

                “He used to tell me lotsa funny stories about kings lopping off peoples’ hands and stuff when they don’t do what they want ‘em to,” Warlock said proudly. “I think he got tired of them or somethin’, though. He won’t tell me them anymore. I dunno. These days he’s always off havin’ existential crises.”

                Aziraphale was confused by many things, including why an eleven-year-old had managed to rattle off the term ‘existential crises’ so casually.

                “I don’t think he’s doin’ very well, to be honest.”

                “Erm.”

                “Last time,” Warlock whispered confidentially, “I think he was crying. I _told_ ‘im the stories weren’t real.”

                “That was very nice of you,” Aziraphale said uncertainly.

                “Yeah. You have’ta be nice to Uncle Crowley, or else he gets all mopey.”

                They stood in silence, Warlock nodding.

                “Yep,” he said. “What do you want to find him for? Are you gonna show him a magic show?”

                “Er, yes?”

                “I don’t know if that’ll cheer him up,” Warlock said dubiously.

                Aziraphale attempted to smile. “It can’t hurt to try, can it?”

                Warlock shrugged. “Guess not. I dunno where he is, but I can give you his number.”

                “I have his number, actually. He won’t pick up.”

                “But do you have his other number?”

                Aziraphale’s brow creased. Warlock grinned, clearly enjoying having a secret to tell.

                “The one he told me to never to use unless a really weird dog came around the house?”

                “ _That_ ,” Aziraphale said, “might be helpful.”

                Warlock gave him the number, and Aziraphale wrote it down. He gave one last look at Warlock, who was still grinning at him conspiratorially, and sighed. He snapped his fingers, and all of a sudden Teddy the cab driver who had definitely been on the other side of town two seconds ago found himself in front of Warlock’s house. Aziraphale said goodbye, and Warlock watched the amazing magician get in the magically appearing cab and be driven away.

 

                Crowley didn’t answer this phone either, but Aziraphale was able to track it down to an address.

                The demon lived a few blocks away.

                Aziraphale was too worried about the end of the world to be completely stunned by how close they’d been all these years, but it was a close call.

                He knew he was in the right place when he saw the car parked out front. It just _looked_ like something the demon would own. He didn’t know why he knew that. It wasn’t like he knew anything about him.

                Aziraphale let himself into the building.

                He also knew he was in the right place because he could sense a strong demonic presence here.

                It was extremely angry.

                Aziraphale paused with his hand on the doorknob, behind which the infernal aura felt stronger. He could sense something else—demon warding, all broken. The atmosphere felt heavy. He opened the door.

                The room behind was empty except for bare furniture and a few plants. There was a hallway at the far end that curved and led away from it. The lights were off. Aziraphale walked forward cautiously.

                “Crowley?” he called.

                On one wall, behind a shelf that looked to have been recently pushed aside, was an anti-angel sigil. It had also been broken.

                Aziraphale became aware of movement in the dark shadow on the other side of the room by the hallway. He stood, his feet glued to the floor, and peered into the darkness.

                “Crowley?” he said, his voice muted with uncertainty and fear.

                Crowley stepped out of the shadow of the hall. He walked toward him. Something was off. He wasn’t wearing his glasses, and Aziraphale saw his eyes for the first time. They were the only thing that matched how he had imagined him before; inhuman, unsettling. There was more than that, though, something odd about his expression. He walked stiffly over to the angel, who still could not make himself move.

                Crowley said in a low, strained voice, “Get on the ground, now. Go along with everything I say or you’re dead.”

                Without thinking, Aziraphale did as he said, his eyes fixed on those of the Serpent. He sat down on the floor. The demon did not look away from him, yellow eyes burning intently. Aziraphale tried to read them. There was something he was missing. There had to be.

                “Crawly?”

                Two more men walked into the room. Demons. One of them, the taller one, looked just how Aziraphale had imagined Crowley looking during his more reasonable imaginings, although maybe a bit smaller. He was taller than Crowley, anyway, and looked far less nice. He and the other demon were radiating hatred. It grew as they looked at Aziraphale and grinned.

                “So _this_ is what’s been keeping you,” the shorter demon said, leering.

                “Starting the war off early, are we, Crowley?” the tall one said. “And you didn’t give us any warning. We could have brought our gear. Helped to finish him off.”

                Aziraphale turned his attention back to Crowley. The Serpent had been staring at him the whole time. Their eyes met.

                Then, Crowley turned to face the other demons, standing between them and Aziraphale. “He’s mine.”

                The taller demon raised his eyebrows. The other one made a noise of frustration.

                “C’mon, Crawly. Share the fun, won’t you?”

                Crowley stepped one foot slightly to the side, widening his stance. Covering Aziraphale. The angel noticed that he held his arms out to the sides, only a little, hardly enough to notice.

                “Do you know how long I’ve been trying to kill this bloody angel?” the Serpent said in a low, dangerous voice. The demons made to step forward, but he stared them down. He growled, “He’s _mine_.”

                “You’re technically not supposed to kill him until the start of the Apocalypse,” the taller demon said. He seemed to be watching the events with a mixture of doubt, amusement, and wariness.

                “I’ll save just enough of him.”

                The demon smirked. He tried to size Crowley up. “I’m—surprised. I’m almost impressed, Crowley. I guess our doubts about you were—unfounded. I didn’t think you had it in you.”

                Crowley said nothing.

                “I guess you were right. No reason to worry about your commitment to our cause. Still, we thought it couldn’t hurt to _check in_.”

                The shorter demon was still staring at Aziraphale with a mixture of hunger and hatred. “Let’s get out of here, Hastur,” he said. “If we can’t kill ‘im I don’t want to stick around. I hate the way they make the air all bright and shimmery.”

                The taller demon shrugged. “Fine. We’ll see you at the war, Crowley. Since you’re so _keen_.”

                 They sneered at Aziraphale, and then the two of them finally left.

                Crowley waited several minutes before turning around. They heard something that sounded not very much like a car engine roar to life, then the demonic presence gradually faded.

                Aziraphale let out a huge breath and relaxed, sliding lower onto the floor as he wiped his brow with his hand. He felt his muscles ache from the strain he had not realized he was putting on them.

                Crowley had only moved a little. He stood, sort of hunched, his hands clenching and unclenching at his sides. He was staring away from Aziraphale, so the angel could only see the side of his face. His eyes, no longer masked by his shades, held too much in them for Aziraphale to read.

                Aziraphale took one more look at the broken anti-angel sigil before getting up.

                Crowley finally looked at him, then noticed that he had seen it.

                “Did you break it?” Aziraphale asked.

                “Yes.”

                “I thought maybe the other demons….”

                Crowley was staring at the ground now. He had put his hands in his pockets.

                “So—what, then?” Aziraphale asked. “Why did you break it? You met me and realized I’m so little of a threat that you didn’t even need to protect yourself from me?”

                “It wasn’t that,” Crowley mumbled.

                “Then what was it?”

                Crowley glanced at him, and said, almost with the tone of a question, “Hope.”

                They stared at each other. Aziraphale made a sudden movement, leaning back a little away from Crowley as though finally realizing he was there. He said to him, “I don’t want to fight you.”

                Crowley stared back at him. And then he said, “I don’t want the world to end.”

                Aziraphale nodded.

                Then Crowley said, “I’m starving. Are you starving?”

 

                On the way to the car, they didn’t speak. Each was absorbed in his own thoughts, and trying to calm down from what they had just been through. Each was trying not to look at the other too much. They sat in awkward silence.

                Until Crowley cranked the engine and the Bentley started playing music automatically.

                Neither of them mentioned it, and Crowley started driving. They made it halfway to the restaurant.

                Aziraphale’s face kept twisting into different expressions. Finally, he couldn’t take it anymore. “What _is_ this?”

                “‘You’re My Best Friend’.”

                Aziraphale turned to him. Then he understood. “Not the song title. I mean, what, erm—musical group?”

                Crowley nearly stopped the car. He turned to the angel, who would have preferred he keep his eyes on the road, where there really was quite a lot of traffic. “You’ve never heard Queen?”

                “I—I can’t say I find it too familiar.”

                Crowley stared at him. He had put on a pair of sunglasses before going out. “You’ve never heard _Queen?_ ”

                Aziraphale didn’t know what to do when he was asked the same question twice, so he simply crossed his arms and looked out the front. Then he grabbed the edge of his seat to brace himself.

                “Here I was thinking maybe you’d been spending time on Earth, after all.”

                “ _Please drive safely_.”

                Crowley spent the rest of the ride grumbling about clueless angels. Aziraphale would have to fill him in on all the things he _had_ been doing over the millennia once they’d reached the restaurant, and remind him that the world was a very big place, and there were plenty of musical groups of which he was aware, so not knowing of one was not really that big of a deal.

                In the meantime, he was listening to the music. It didn’t sound like something he would have expected a demon to enjoy.

                The next song was ‘Bohemian Rhapsody.’ That sounded more like it, he thought.

                Until he thought about the lyrics.

                He glanced at Crowley out of the corner of his eye. They needed to stop this war. And so they needed to work together.


	8. Making Plans

                An angel and a demon dined at the Ritz on the day before the end of the world.

                Crowley stared glumly into his glass of wine. “Do you remember the flood?”

                _So we’re getting right into things, then_ , Aziraphale thought grimly. He took a sip before replying. “Not as much as I should. More than I’d like.”

                Crowley nodded. “It feels like that again. Like we’re in a tunnel that’s getting narrower and narrower and no matter how many times we try to run circles around the edges, we keep getting pushed forward, the circles getting tighter and tighter until we’re just—” He cut himself off and took a large gulp of wine.

                “But it won’t even be like that this time,” Aziraphale said sadly. “This time it has nothing to do with them. It’s not because they’ve been good or bad. I mean, what was the point of us, all this time? If they’re only going to be destroyed anyway.”

                “There was _never_ any point to us,” Crowley said suddenly. “What does it matter, if humans were good or bad? In the great cosmic scheme of things, I mean. Sure it matters in their daily lives, but not to the _Apocalypse_. I mean, what is the point of wiping everyone out as soon as they’re bad? Hmm?”

                “Well,” Aziraphale said uncertainly, but Crowley glared at him.

                “What’s the good of eliminating bad things from the outside, eh? That doesn’t actually make everything better. It just makes everything—less. It makes it smaller. Getting rid of bad people just makes it a smaller world.”

                Aziraphale opened his mouth, but couldn’t think of anything to say. He squinted at him, his brain whirring.

                “If every person were eliminated the second they did a bad thing, how many people would be left? Would anyone be? Would you?”

                Aziraphale shuddered. Then he shook his head. “Is that what this is, then?” he said quietly. “The end of—of everything. Everything getting made smaller until it’s really gone?”

                Crowley dropped himself back in his seat grumpily. “I don’t know. Don’t ask me, I don’t bloody know.”

                Aziraphale regarded him. Then he realized, he _wanted_ to ask him. So he said, “Well. What do you _think?_ ”

 

                It went on for a while, the two of them talking, forgetting what they had met for, because all of that seemed futile, anyway. Crowley spoke about the world and good and bad and everything, and Aziraphale, for the most part, sat and listened. He was usually the one who did the talking when it came to morals and ethics. He usually counseled poor lost souls, and people came to him when they were confused, and he would say something comforting like ‘Look to your faith to guide you’. It wasn’t that he even considered himself the highest authority on the subject. It was just that when you went around building churches, people assumed you were, and he had never known what else to tell them.

                He had never been talked _to_ this much in his entire life on Earth. It was doing him a world of good. “ _You_ can’t tell me about morals,” said a part of Aziraphale, right before it was eclipsed by a larger part that instead asked Crowley about his opinion on yet another ethical conundrum, because after all this time part of him wanted to get told.

                He was noticing something about being talked to by Crowley. It didn’t feel the same as when Heaven told him something, or his superiors, who of course knew everything about good and bad there was to know. Being talked to by Crowley felt more like being asked an endless series of questions. It felt like being told, ‘Go and figure it out for yourself’.

                Aziraphale listened. Sometimes he interjected a thought of his own, and sometimes Crowley would actually look surprised, like he’d given him a side of things he’d never thought about before. It made Aziraphale feel a bit better. He wasn’t sure he deserved it, but he liked it, all the same.

                Then Aziraphale asked him a question. “You haven’t really been spreading evil, have you?” He took a bite of his fish, which had gotten cold in the time they had been talking, and waited.

                “Of course I have.”

                Aziraphale nodded patiently. He understood. “Of course you have. It’s your job.”

                “A guy can get into some nasty situations if he doesn’t do his job,” Crowley said guiltily.

                “But what I mean is, the ways in which you’ve been spreading this evil, corrupting souls—you’ve taken an _unconventional approach_ , haven’t you?”

                Crowley floundered. “Erm.”

                “Wars. Poverty driven by greed. Religion used as an excuse for genocide. All the typical sorts of things one might assume were the consequence of an entity of evil. These haven’t been your main focus here on Earth, have they?”

                Crowley looked a bit sheepish, but mostly immeasurably relieved. “Not really, no.”

                “No,” Aziraphale repeated, nodding. Then he gave him a quizzical look. “Then what _have_ you been doing?”

                Crowley told him.

                He told him about coins glued to the pavement. About phone lines and traffic. In old days, there were always small temptations. Songs with raunchy lyrics to popularize in the countryside. Extravagant fashions to spread throughout the cities, encouraging vanity and greed. Morally questionable plays to finance. Innumerable pubs to frequent and support. And if those pubs all of a sudden found themselves out of stock, well, it didn’t bring out a very pretty side of its human regulars.

                “A varnish of sin applied to hundreds, maybe thousands, all at once.”

                And Aziraphale understood. A varnish of corruption, and never enough to quite reach all the way through to the core.

                “Old school demons, like Hastur and Ligur,” Crowley said, “they’re still caught up on craftsmanship. The world’s too big for that now. You’ve got to go mass-production or you’ve got nothing.”

                Aziraphale nodded, and thought about Crowley’s car, the way he’d run his hand over it lovingly and commented on its beautiful craftsmanship. He thought about his pen, which had had a limited release, and his watch, which was one-of-a-kind. He thought about the painting of the Mona Lisa hanging in his flat. He thought he knew exactly what Crowley knew about mass-production, and exactly how effective he thought it was.

                “You might disapprove of the original idea I was going to put towards you, then,” Aziraphale said. “About possibly averting the Apocalypse.”

                “Is that why you showed up at my flat? I think any plan at preventing the war would sound good right about now.”

                “I was going to say we could kill the Antichrist.”

                Crowley had been fiddling with his food. He stopped.

                “Or at least do whatever it took to prevent the destruction he is meant to cause.”

                “He’ll be eleven,” Crowley said, sounding choked.

                “I know.”

                “Maybe he won’t be—like other eleven-year-olds. I mean, I wasn’t there to corrupt him, but maybe he’ll naturally be a nasty, cruel thing, and it won’t be so bad—”

                “Was his father nasty and cruel when he was first made?” Aziraphale asked. “Before the events of his existence shaped him? That’s not how genealogy works, I’m afraid.”

                Crowley looked miserable. He pushed his barely-touched plate away in disgust.

                “Forget the Antichrist. Crowley. Your attempts at corrupting the Earth were rubbish,” Aziraphale said. “And I mean that as a compliment. But that’s because the Earth is not a thing with direction. It flows and grows around every little flaw and blemish like an invasive mold. It _survives_.”

                Crowley raised an eyebrow at him. Aziraphale leaned forward.

                “But what tiny, distracting, _obnoxious_ obstructions are _really_ good at,” he said, “is messing up meticulously organized, every-last-detail-set-in-stone, _Plans_.”

                Crowley leaned forward too. “Was that ‘Plans’ with a capital ‘P’?”

                Aziraphale nodded. Crowley grinned.

                “Angel. I like the way you think.”

 

                They talked it all over, everything they could come up with that would put a wrench in the Plan. If the political leaders of every nation on the brink of war were suddenly to be distracted from their duty, right when the declarations were about to be made, by a bad case of the stomach flu. If the Antichrist’s hellhound were to be lured away from his master’s side by an entire truckload of cats. If a good portion of Hell’s army were to be whisked away right before the battle, because they had all been summoned through ouija boards by every single Satanic Nun. If Heaven’s soldiers were to be bombarded with prayers because the holiday season had started earlier than ever this year, and vast numbers of religious people had been reminded of their religious duty by a touching holiday advert. Alternatively, if they were to receive prayers sent by large quantities of people who had seen a particularly moving advertisement about animal shelters. One that used religious imagery, maybe even a reference to angels in its musical score, Aziraphale had added. Apparently when large volumes of humans prayed all at once, it was almost deafening.

                They talked for a long time, until the lunch crowd was replaced with the afternoon tea crowd, which was replaced by people who had gone out for dinner. Their waiter* had given up checking in on them. Their glasses seemed to always be full, anyways.

*Onslow was technically supposed to remind guests of the time when they had outstayed their welcome. He had been watching these two gentlemen eat here, separately, for years, each one always alone. He had been entertaining a fancy for some while now. It was only a fancy brought about from boredom at serving strangers all day that made him think of it, but now that the two had somehow come together, he was certainly not going to rush them. Not such loyal customers, who seemed to be having the conversation of their lives.

                The biggest thing they could do, they decided, was to fantastically bungle their own ‘battle’. They would have to meet at Armageddon as planned. Crowley’s side already suspected him of possibly backing out. Aziraphale didn’t like the idea of facing Heaven’s wrath if he disobeyed orders either. They would meet at their battle stations, and then….then they would put on the worst fight ever.

                It was all they could think of.

                It would have to be enough.

                “So that’s that,” Crowley said, finally, after they’d been going over things for hours, and it was clear to both of them that if they spent any more time trying to think of ideas they would implode.

                “It’s really all I’ve got, I’m afraid,” Aziraphale sighed.

                They sat. Crowley picked at the tablecloth. Aziraphale folded his napkin. “I’m not really sure what to do now,” he admitted.

                “Neither am I,” Crowley said in relief.

                There was a pause.

                “You know, I think I might order another slice,” Aziraphale said, gesturing to the plate his dessert had come on. “Might as well, since it’s not as though I have to worry about keeping this corporation in shape much longer—er. Well, hopefully I will. Nonetheless. Ah, you don’t have to wait for me if you have somewhere you’d rather—”

                “I don’t mind,” Crowley said. He added bashfully, “Oh. Er. Unless you want—some time alone?”

                Aziraphale thought about it. “I really don’t.”

                Crowley nodded, brightening up. “Onslow?” he called to the waiter who had been hovering conveniently nearby, like a true professional. “Would you bring back the dessert menu, please?”

                Onslow, less like a professional, since several guests had been waiting for a table for an hour already, cheerfully obliged.

 

                Crowley was having more fun than he should. He always liked learning about people, but with Aziraphale—he could understand. He’d thought he understood all the human friends he had made over the years, but it was nothing to the way he instantly comprehended everything Aziraphale was telling him about his life as though he had been there too. As though he had lived in a world that was more like _his_ same world than anyone else’s. Everything he said instantly seemed familiar.

                Some things, they were finding, were a little too familiar.

 

                “You were at the Crystal Palace too?”

                “Yes, and you? Were you trying to encourage the obsession with commodities and material goods?”

                “No. I wanted to see the daguerreotypes.”

 

                “I remember there was a scandal when his daughter ran off to become a nun.”

                “Oh. Yes, well. Like I told her, marrying that man would never have made her happy.”

                “You mean that was _you?_ ”

 

                “You knew _him too?_ ”

                “We went to the premiere of his last ballet together.”

                “That bastard! He told me he had a head cold!”

 

                Crowley and Aziraphale looked at one another across the table.

                “So,” Aziraphale said dryly. “It seems we have been more involved with one another’s lives than it at first appeared.”

                “But not in the ways we expected,” Crowley pointed out.

                “True.” Aziraphale patted his mouth with his napkin and pushed away his second dessert plate. “Did I ever thank you for—what you did today?”

                Crowley sat back and glanced at the rest of the emptying restaurant. “Can’t say that you did.”

                “Well—”

                “Course, we’re even. You did me a favor showing up like that, giving me the opportunity to show those guys that I was ready to fight you. Er.”

                Aziraphale raised his eyebrows.

                “So really,” Crowley said, “that worked out pretty well for _me_ , overall.”

                “Right.”

                “And what you said,” Crowley continued in a softer voice. “After—”

                “ _Thank_ you.”

                Crowley bit his lip. He stared at Aziraphale over the tops of his glasses. “How do you _do_ that?” he said, in a voice that almost sounded agonized.

                “Do what?”

                “Just say things—say things like that. With your voice all—” What he was trying to say was that when Aziraphale had said it, the angel had somehow made his voice so soft, so earnest. He’d made Crowley feel like he’d been wrapped in a warm blanket and punched in the gut at the same time. “You sound so _nice_ ,” he said with a grimace.

                “I’m an angel,” Aziraphale said, bemused.

                “Yeah, but—”

                “Truth be told,” the angel sighed, “it probably just surprised you because most of the time I don’t sound very nice at all.”

                Crowley considered this. Then he snorted. “Yeah. That might be it.”

                Aziraphale tilted his head at him, deliberating on how the demon’s reaction made him feel. He ended up smirking. “Yes, well. I admit I’m not always the cuddly cherub humans might expect of me.”

                “S’allright. I’m not the kind of demon people expect me to be either.”

                “But that’s—” Aziraphale stopped himself, not wanting to say anything that might offend.

                “I’m not terrifying,” Crowley said quietly. He lowered his gaze to the tablecloth. “I’m not a warrior at all. I’m terrified. I’m a coward.”

                “Because you’ve said that,” Aziraphale said. “Because of all the things you’ve been brave enough to say to me—I think you’re the most courageous person I’ve known.”

                Crowley felt the words imprinting themselves on his brain. _“I think…..you’re..…person.”_

                “I hope it’s all right that I said that,” the angel said, almost too quietly for him to hear.

                _I’ve known….you…._

_“You’re a person.”_

                Crowley stared at him, not a word coming to mind. Just the angel’s, repeating themselves.

                “We should probably go,” Aziraphale said. “The kitchen staff have been watching us hopefully for half an hour now.”

                “Right.”

                “Erm—tomorrow.”

                “Tomorrow it is,” Crowley said, getting up. Aziraphale followed suit. “I think—” the demon said. “I think I’m going to go home. Try to sleep. For a bit. In case it—case it helps tomorrow.”

                They knew their sides would be calling them first thing in the morning. They’d have to go over the plans one last time with their great war heroes. Once they were sent back to Earth, they were going to find each other and set their own plan in motion—hopefully.

                “That sounds like a good idea,” Aziraphale said. “Well. Until tomorrow, then?”

                “Until tomorrow.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> "Until Tomorrow Then" by Ed Harcourt happens to be one of my all-time favorite A/C songs, so I was excited when it popped up so naturally while I was writing this :)


	9. Tomorrow

                They were supposed to meet in St. James’s Park. They would hear about Armageddon once the Antichrist had determined its location. They wouldn’t be able to help hearing because of the chaos that would erupt from wherever it was.

                They had planned on getting together before then so they could work on the rest of their plan. Aziraphale had already been summoned by Heaven that morning. He’d gone and gotten his last-minute armor check, along with his new sword. It didn’t light on fire. It still shone too brightly.

                He admitted he looked a bit conspicuous in St. James’, standing there in ethereal armor, but he figured subtlety hardly mattered now.

                He’d arrived at the park even earlier than the time they’d set to meet. He wondered if Crowley was trying to make a dramatic entrance again. He doubted it. He checked his watch. It was only now the time.

                He waited.

                He checked his watch again. The demon was late.

                Aziraphale waited a little longer. He left, found a payphone, and called both of Crowley’s numbers.

                He went back to the park and looked around.

                “Ah,” he said. “Shit.”

 

                Anathema had lived her entire life without ever having been hit by a car, and she was loving it.

                But something felt wrong. It was the book. No matter how many times she read the part about what was going to happen next, she couldn’t shake the feeling that there were pages missing, although there was no sign of anything having been torn out. Everything had happened like it said it would. Newt had arrived, the weather was getting bad—but she couldn’t shake the feeling that something about the way she was reading the book now was just _wrong_.

                “We know where it’s going to happen. We’ve figured out the clues. We could just go and stop it.” She put the end of the pen with which she’d been scribbling notes to her lips. She frowned. “Something just doesn’t seem right.”

                “You know, every time you say ‘Something just doesn’t seem right’,” Newt said, staring at her from across the room helplessly, “I feel like shouting at you, _‘It’s the end of the world!_ ’ But I haven’t done that yet.”

                “Nuclear,” she murmured, scanning the notes she had so far. “Yes, I get that. But what’s missing.”

                “Which I thought was very considerate of me.”

                “I feel—” She sighed in frustration and rolled her eyes up to the ceiling. “I feel almost like we should have _help_.”

                “That would be nice,” Newt grumbled.

                “Like someone else should _be_ here. Maybe ‘help’ isn’t the right word. Maybe what I mean is—interference. I almost feel like things should be going a lot more— _annoyingly_ for me.”

                “Well.” Newton stood by her side and put his hand on her shoulder. “You said you know what you have to do to try to stop it, right? Maybe _I_ could help.”

                Anathema smiled at him politely, then sighed and grabbed her bag. “I guess you’ll have to do.”

 

                Aziraphale rushed into his bookshop, which was resting at a normal, non-scorching temperature. He went to the back where he kept his collections that required spatial tampering in order to fit.

                “Phone book, phone book.” He shoved books out of his way, looking for one that was recent. “There we are!”

                Crowley hadn’t been at home. One of his potted plants had been knocked over. Aziraphale felt there was only one thing to do.

                “Here we are,” he said, finding the page almost by chance. There were so many options. Now was not the time for dilly-dallying. He closed his eyes and pointed at one.

                “You,” he said.

 

                Madame Tracy had been living a nice life. She couldn’t complain. Things were quieting down, and nothing strange or stressful had happened to her in ages.

                Still, it would be nice to have had a little bit of romance. A girl could do with some excitement and adventure now and then. It was good for the heart, she’d always thought.

                The window shattered, glass bursting inward, and an angel, resplendent in full battle armor, still glowing from the light of heaven and the glare from the sword it held high in one hand, lighted down upon her rug.

                Madame Tracy stared at him.

                Then she giggled.

                “ _So_ sorry, my dear woman,” Aziraphale said. “Still need to work on my landings. I’ll clean this up, to be sure, but I am in a bit of a rush. I’ve heard you perform séances?”

 

                Shadwell wasn’t too sure about this whole séance thing. And then they had mentioned a portal to Hell, which had made him somewhat wary. And then someone had said something about summoning a demon.

                That Aziraphale was an angel though, and there was no higher authority against the forces of evil than that. He surely ought to follow the orders of an angel, and that was what this Aziraphale was. No one could ever be mistaken about that fact.

                They sat around the summoning circle. Shadwell kept getting flicked in the arm by the angel’s wings.

                “Sorry,” Aziraphale said. “All this armor keeps them sticking out.”

                “It says it requires ‘virgin blood’.” Madame Tracy giggled. “Oh dear.”

                “Not to worry. It only means blood from someone who’s never given blood in order to perform a satanic ritual before. Mr. Shadwell, I presume you’ve never been involved in such a thing?”

                Shadwell went pale. He’d pricked plenty a person with his trusty pins throughout the years, but he didn’t quite like the thought of being on the other side of the equation.

                “My blood will work quite nicely then, not to worry, love,” Madame Tracy said. “I’ve never done anything like this before.”

                “You haven’t?”

                “Oh no.” She gave him a delightedly affronted look. “What sort of séances did you think I’ve been _having?_ ”

                Aziraphale’s mouth opened and closed. He shook himself. “Well, there’s not enough time to worry now. We might as well get on with it.”

                Madame Tracy pricked her finger delicately with a hairpin, and the ritual was complete. Aziraphale murmured some words in an old language. He was careful to pronounce the Serpent’s old name correctly; the one he used to have, though Aziraphale refused to call anything but ‘Crowley’ his ‘real’ name. The circle on the floor began to glow.

                The lights went out. Then the room was illuminated by a deep red glow coming from the symbols they had painted on the floor. The walls began to shake from a rumbling that was growing louder and louder.

                “Goodness,” Aziraphale said. “You know, with all the fuss of the last few days, I’d almost forgotten he was associated with this sort of thing.”

                “This is very exciting,” Madame Tracy said.

                Shadwell was wishing he’d brought his bell and book.

                The rumbling shook the entire building. The red light grew more vibrant, until it broke through the ground and flames shot up through the circle. They died back only a little, showing that the floor within the circle had crumbled, opening up into a gaping mouth of fire. A hand shot up through the hole and grabbed the edge. Out of the flaming pit crawled Crowley, still in his human form and clothes, but smoldering, his eyes burning, a forked tongue flickering out of his mouth as he clawed his way into the room.

                He managed to bring himself to his feet, and he stood in front of the summoning circle as the flames died down and the hole closed itself.

                Shadwell looked at them all. He mumbled something that, due to his accent, no one understood. It was for the best.

                “You called?” Crowley said, once he had gotten his breath back and managed to get his tongue to stay in his mouth.

                “Crowley!”

                “Oh, hello angel.”

                “This is _very_ exciting,” came Madame Tracy’s faint voice from the floor behind him.

                “Crowley,” Aziraphale said, “what happened?”

                “Apparently Duke Hastur was _not_ convinced that I fully supported the war. He told the others and they decided to lock me up so I couldn’t pull any ‘funny business’. Sorry I couldn’t make our da—er, arranged meeting, Aziraphale. I was, well.” He gestured at his smoking clothes.

                “Good gracious.”

                “Luckily if a demon is summoned he has to go, even if he’s in one of Hell’s prisons. So thanks for that. Bad news though. It turns out we’re completely unnecessary for the start of the Apocalypse.”

                “How is that _bad_ news?”

                “It means it’s going on anyway. Good news, though, is I found out where the Antichrist is. He’s not too far from here. We could still make it.”

                “Er.” Madame Tracy had pulled herself to her feet and walked over to them. “Make what?”

                “Armageddon,” Aziraphale said. “Which we’re trying to stop,” he added quickly, less because Shadwell had balled up his fist, and more because of the look that had come into Madame Tracy’s eye. He turned to Crowley. “But can we?”

                “I don’t know.”

                The angel and the demon stared at each other.

                Madame Tracy huffed. “Well, we’d better bloody well try,” she said, and she marched for the door. Crowley and Aziraphale gave each other wide-eyed looks, then nodded and followed her. Shadwell grabbed his things and grumbled about how if they thought he was going to let two nancy boys be their only hope at fighting Armageddon, they were mad, but nobody was much listening to him.

 

                They stared at the scooter.

                “It might fit three people,” Madame Tracy said.

                “Sure,” Crowley mumbled. “If one of us sits on top of the other.”

                “But not four, I don’t think,” Madame Tracy said sadly.

                Aziraphale was trying to figure out how to politely inform Madame Tracy that he would be temporarily commandeering her scooter. Even though he couldn’t drive the thing. He was sure Crowley would be able to.

                Meanwhile, Crowley was hoping the angel would not assume that very thing.

                Just then, the strangest vehicle came puttering down the road. It was small and oddly shaped, and it looked like it had been through a wreck recently. It stopped right in front of them. A young woman got out of the driver’s seat.

                “I knew there was something I was missing in the book!” she cried, looking at them triumphantly. Aziraphale and Crowley were suddenly aware of how inhuman they looked, but she didn’t seemed surprised. “I knew it! And then Newt tells me he’s just gotten a call from his boss about ethereal agents from Heaven showing up on his doorstep. I’m going to have to have a talk with Agnes when we meet again. No mention of it at all!”

                “Mr. Shadwell,” Aziraphale exclaimed. “You called back-up on us? I am an _angel!_ You should be ashamed!”

                “Shouldn’t you, as an _angel_ ,” Crowley said, “be more concerned with the fact that you’re scaring humans?”

                “Your eyes are glowing, dear boy.”

                Crowley manifested a pair of shades.

                “I don’t know _who_ you are,” Anathema said. “But I am trying to stop the Apocalypse, so if you want to help, come on, if you don’t—”

                “We’re helping,” Crowley said. “Do you know where Tadfield is?”

                Anathema sighed. “Why don’t you all just get in the car?”

 

                Adam’s life was going exactly the same.

                And it was falling apart.

 

                So was the world, as Dick Turpin rolled down the shivering road towards Tadfield, where the ground was trembling and the sky was turning darker by the second.

                “Maybe Newt and I can do something about the nuclear reactors,” Anathema said. She and Madame Tracy had taken the front two seats. Newt, Shadwell, Aziraphale, and Crowley had all squashed into the back.

                “You know,” Crowley said to the angel, “I feel sort of bad that the Bentley’s stuck at home, missing all the action.”

                Aziraphale was trying to take up a fraction of the space he normally consumed to avoid sitting on Mister Shadwell. “Are you sure,” he said, bracing himself with one hand on the ceiling and the other on the seat in front of him, “that the Bentley would _want_ to be a part of this action?”

                “But what can I do about nuclear reactors?” Newt was fretting.

                “I’m sure we’ll think of something.”

                “Anathema,” Newt said in a tone of reason. “If you have a book of prophecies that say how the world’s going to end—and if it doesn’t say that we stop it—and if the book _ends_ after its prophesied end of the world—then what hope are we grasping onto, again?”

                Anathema remained silent. Newt sighed.

                “I was worried about that.”

 

                Deep beneath the dimensions, far below the physical realm, within the ranks of infernal soldiers who were lining up, readying for battle, Ligur gave a start.

                “What?” snapped Hastur, who was feeling more on edge than he would like to admit.

                “I dunno,” Ligur said, staring into space. “Just saw my life flash before my eyes, I did.”

                “I’m sure it was lovely,” Hastur sneered.

                “Hey Hastur. D’you ever think about how lucky you are to be alive?”

                “Pull yourself together,” Hastur said in disgust.

                Ligur gave him a look out of the corner of his eye. “You’d miss me if I was gone, you know.”

                “ _What?_ ”

                Luckily for Ligur, the troops were called to attention, so he was spared being attacked by a fellow demon for the second time that day.

 

                The Wasabi pulled into the Lower Tadfield Air Base. Various miraculous or infernal manipulations managed to get them through the gates. Dick Turpin sputtered to a halt.*

*Carrying six people after already having wrecked recently was too much for the poor vehicle.

Anathema and Madame Tracy stepped out of the front. The back was a more complicated issue. Newt was too squished against the door to move. Shadwell had been jabbing Aziraphale with his inordinately large supply of pins whenever he invaded his personal space, so Aziraphale had scooched in the other direction. By the time they arrived, Crowley was practically on top of him. Anathema opened the door for them, and the demon gracefully tumbled out.

                “So we’re here?” he said.

                “This is where it’s supposed to go down. According to Agnes, anyway.”

                Aziraphale stepped out of the car. “It sounds like having information from this Agnes woman would have been helpful all along,” he said a trifle testily.

                “What would you have done if you’d known this was where it was happening sooner?”

                Aziraphale and Crowley glanced at each other guiltily.

                “We sort of had a plan,” Aziraphale began.

                “A rotten one,” Crowley finished. “You lot are doing fine. What were you saying about disrupting the equipment?”

 

                They went their separate ways, Newt and Anathema into the base, and the other four around it, looking for the Antichrist.

                They found him.

                They found him, and three other kids. They were standing a little ways away from where their dropped bicycles lay on the ground. They were standing face to face with the four Horsepersons of the Apocalypse.

                War, Famine, Pollution, and Death faced Them.

                Adam’s life had been going exactly the same.

                The narrator of this story mentioned in the beginning that one small rebellion would change the history of humanity. That altering one event would alter everything leading up to and including the end of the end of the world.

                I may have exaggerated about that.

                History for many was much the same, but this is about just one of those stories that we love. One angel being told to stay away from one serpent only changed history for the two of them. It only mattered to them. But isn’t that the point?

                Meanwhile, Adam. The son of the devil himself, the boy who had been sent to Earth with his life already planned—the kid who was told he could create anything, could do anything he wanted, who was told he could change history—and whose story had also already been written for him long ago.

                The walking paradox.

                The little, stubborn, grubby-kneed, living and breathing rebellion.

                Things for Adam had been going exactly the same. Angels and demons had never made much difference to him, anyway. But wasn’t that also the point?

                So, Adam Young faced Death, who peered down at him with his fathomless, endless eyes.

                IT HAS BEEN DONE, said Death.

                Adam peered right back at him.

                Then he said, “Yes, well.” And then he said, “The thing _is_ ….”

 

                _“He didn’t want to do it!”_

 

                “It’s not over.”

 

                It wasn’t all over for a long time. There were many things to do. Newt and Anathema came back outside. They were joined by representatives from Heaven and Hell, both very angry. There was a lot left to do. Mostly, though, and very surprisingly, most of it involved talking.

                At one point, Aziraphale said, “Excuse me.” And then proceeded to discuss the definition of a particular word. One whose description is a bit fuzzy. Crowley joined him.

                The representatives from Heaven and Hell left.*

*Well, the angel and the serpent weren’t _entirely_ useless.

 

                And at one point, it seemed like it really was all over. It seemed like the end was coming. _He_ was coming.

                Aziraphale and Crowley knew. They could feel it. The ground had begun to shake. Differently this time, not because of something happening on Earth. Because of something happening deep Below.

                There were humans there. Aziraphale and Crowley stayed.

                At one point, Aziraphale turned to the serpent. “I’d just like to say,” he said, “if we don’t get out of this, that.…”

                There was little enough to be said. There were no confessions to make about what they had learned about each other, the discoveries they had made, because compared to what they had thought two weeks ago, the fact that they were here together made all of that obvious. They knew.

                “I’d just like to say,” Aziraphale went on, “that I think finally meeting you might possibly be the best thing that has ever happened to me.”

                Crowley stared. Then he grinned, that slow grin. The one that had used to make the angel nervous, but now made him feel like, somehow, things would be all right.

                “And I’d just like to say,” Crowley said, “that—that, angel, I like you a whole hell of a lot.”

 

                Then it was all right.

                It was _Over_. After everything, and not without a good deal of trauma to stick around with them for Somebody knew how long. Adam chose which family he wanted to belong to, and then it finally ended. Only the End, though. It was the end of the End and the start of—something else.

                They all went through a lot to get there, but they could deal with that later. They could live with it. They were of the Earth.

                The Earth _survives_.

 

                R.P. Tyler was holding it together.

                He’d had a few minor occurrences that day that had shaken him a tad, but nothing too serious. If he had to witness one more odd event, one more bizarre phenomenon hurtling towards him like a fireball, his nerves might not pull through. They had only been bikers, though, and those kids who were always up to something. He could certainly handle that.

                He turned the corner, and came face to face with two beings who were glowing, one with hellfire and the other with celestial light, walking hand in hand down the road. They both had wings. One had yellow eyes and the other was holding a flaming sword.

 _Well_ , he thought, _it’s nice they have each other_.

                And then he fainted.


	10. Epilogue, AKA Beginning 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading <3

                Without a car, and having decided to leave the humans be, Crowley and Aziraphale took the long way home. By the time they made it back to Soho the sky had been dark for hours. They stood outside the bookshop. It was oddly chilly.

                “Strange weather for this time of year,” Aziraphale said.

                “Exactly as it should be,” Crowley pointed out.

                The angel smiled and nodded, his eyes cast down at the ground. Crowley tried to guess what he was thinking. It seemed like he’d grown to know him so fast and so completely, just in a few days, but it was only compared to what he had thought of him before. He realized he had a lot more to learn. He didn’t mind the thought.

                He still didn’t know what the angel’s silence meant, though. Crowley shuffled his feet. “Well,” he said. “Don’t lose touch.”

                “I wasn’t planning on it.”

                It was Crowley’s turn to nod at the ground. Then he snickered.

                “What?” the angel asked.

                “‘Plan’.”

                “With a lowercase ‘p’, I assure you,” Aziraphale said, with that wry smile that had become so familiar.

                “Right.” Crowley laughed. “Hmm. Do we have a new plan?”

                Aziraphale mused. Then he shrugged at him. “What do you think?”

                “I think,” Crowley said, “that from here, we’ll just have to wing it.”

                Then he grinned that grin that Aziraphale finally thought he could read.

                “Sounds good,” the angel said. There was something warming within him when he looked at that demon. For the first time he felt it on his own face, the way his lips pressed together and the corners of his mouth curved, out of his control. _How do you do that?_ Crowley had asked. The truth was he didn’t know. He wasn’t even sure he was the one doing it to himself at all.

                The two of them stood there with their matched smiles, until their nerves made them fade away.

                “I feel like we should be celebrating,” Crowley said. He laughed awkwardly. “But we drank all of that wine you’d been saving.”

                “I actually had more than one bottle,” Aziraphale said. “I—I may have a bit of a ‘saving things for later’ problem.”

                “Mm. Well then. It’s a good thing we’ve got a ‘later’ after all.” Crowley ran his hand through his hair. “Er. I mean. Not tonight, if you don’t—” He stopped talking.

                Aziraphale was glad that he hadn’t finished. He looked up into the night sky, at the bright moon, which was already beginning to set. He murmured, “It’s not too late.”

                Then he looked at Crowley, gestured to the door of his bookshop, and shrugged.

                Crowley smiled, and they walked in together.

                No nightingales. Just the sound of the bell on the door to a bookshop, and two people already laughing at something one of them had said, or at nothing much at all, or at everything, at last.


End file.
